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sure, sure by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-28 21:15 · Score: 1, Interesting · on Researchers Cripple Pushdo Botnet

researchers

No, you aren't. I don't know why people working in IT security have the ego to always add the word "researcher" to their title. Just because your job involves problem solving it doesn't mean you're a "researcher" as the term is understood everywhere else. Anyway, where does your R&D budget come from for this team of "researchers", and what do you get back?

at Last Line of Defense

Who? So many overgrown hax0rs slapping a stupid name on their activities and calling themselves a business, using inflated claims of leet-sounding achievements for PR then pushing security "solutions" to idiots.

a security intelligence firm

lol. k guise. security intelligence. security intelligence. yuo.

Look, it's cool what you've done. But would you kindly put yourself into context and stop adopting a pompous vocabulary unique to your trade? Perhaps the state of PC security wouldn't be so dire if it wasn't such a mixture of AV vendors enjoying protection money and ADHD-crippled scene d00ds lacking formal grounding and in a permanent state of 14 year old.

Posting AC because the kid has a water pistol and it's too early in the morning to get wet.

Re:U2: Union Busters by Knuckles · 2008-01-29 07:53 · Score: 1 · on U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders

And they needlessly nailed the final nail into SST Records: http://www.swcp.com/rtoads/printmag/issue3/neg_data.html

Re:What a crock by Knuckles · 2008-01-29 07:48 · Score: 1 · on U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders

until now I've been OK with their politics.

Except that in U2's name*, their label not so many years ago sued a little band and one of the best record levels ever, SST Records, into bankruptcy. It's ironic that this manager now ridicules "miserable artists" that "went broke", as if it always was their own fault.

* Some time later, The Edge denied to have had any knowledge about this. But that seems not to jive with how the manager describes U2's business attitude in the speech. I dunno about the role of same manager in this.

Re:Why does the website already show "TM"? by ThreeGigs · 2008-01-22 04:06 · Score: 1 · on Groklaw Explains the Cyberlaw "Trademark"

So... what if someone else stuck a TM after Cyberlaw?

Like this:
http://www.swcp.com/~zialink/patent.htm

or this...
http://www.sjgames.com/SS/cyberlaw.html ...and seems the term has been leveraged before, in court:
http://www.oss.net/dynamaster/file_archive/040320/c378876cc036a94572ec64d1b6f1258f/OSS1993-01-29.pdf

Idiocy by sesshomaru · 2006-08-04 10:38 · Score: 1 · on Don't Go Down Memory Lane?

Here's an example. Konami's Castlevania had interesting monsters, catchy music, and a great gimmick: a guy with a whip. But if you went back and played it today, chances are you wouldn't bother playing past the second level. Why are the newest games in the series so drastically different from the original? The answer is because gamers demand more from their hobby now, and there's just not a lot of meat on those old bones. But when the fully 3D, story-driven sequel fails, they point at the original on its lofty pedestal and demand an experience that lives up to their memories. It's a double standard that's next to impossible to satisfy.

Um... nobody wants a 3D Castlevania (Well, nobody except for the article's author, but then he's So Cool.) , but new 2D Castlevanias still do a respectable business. Trust me, they aren't coming out with Portrait of Ruin because of charity. The Castlevania series is still popular in 2D, and sometimes I even hear grumbling about the Metroidvania sequels from people (my brother) who miss the old level-boss-level-boss-etc. until Dracula-end. I don't like the original Castlevania. (My brother does though, and always has. I guess he likes the challenge, but he always was stubborn.) However, Dracula's Curse (I think Simon's Quest, too, but I haven't played it recently.) is still a lot of fun despite it's dated graphics, and the later 2D entries in the series are mostly good. I've beaten Castlevania: Bloodlines many times, and usually when I play, I at least get to Atlantis before quitting.

Oh, and you know what I did Thursday? I gave a 12 year old girl my Gameboy and let her play Super Mario Brothers III. Know what? She had fun. She wanted to play with it, it was her choice. Later on, she picked it up and played it again. No nostalgia involved.

I'll repeat, nobody wants a 3D Castlevania, and if Konami (at the behest of S--y) wants to keep shoveling money into that hole, I say more power to them (in my very best Emile Lizardo/John Whorfin voice)... as long as it doesn't stop the DS Castlevanias.

Voice vote. by Grendel+Drago · 2005-11-03 02:47 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Reining in Google

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed by a voice vote in both houses of Congress. Pusillanimous toads, the lot of them. So no, you don't know how your Congresscritter voted.

Sun .au files! The Letter "U" and the Numeral "2" by Tackhead · 2004-01-16 03:57 · Score: 3, Interesting · on What Was the Very First MP3 You Downloaded?

> I remember someone in the Sun workstation room of my school playing a crappy version of the Star Wars theme ; we were all wondering where the fun was in that (since we all had that famous sally.au and 007.au) when he said that the file was only a few ko (we had a 2Mo quota then) thanks to a new system he had found on xarchie...yes, mp3 !

w00t. Sun .au files!

My first introduction "digital music" was also sally.au (and with some fun with xhost and .rhosts, we told Sally to pretend to enjoy herself by jumping to random machines in the lab, whereupon we walked away and watched hilarity ensue through a nearby window), followed up immediately by both parts of Negativland's "U2" parody.

The ironic part is that I got the .au files (and later, the MP3s) of the Negativland tracks because you couldn't buy the U2 parody due to U2's label suing Negativland for copyright infringement. That's right. RIAA's landsharks were suing people to PREVENT people from BUYING music. (Because, of course, it was music that they didn't control. So it's OK to sue people for producing it.) The only way to obtain the tracks in question was to digitize and pirate them.

Wired also has an article on the mess.

Eventually it all got settled, and the world has been able to download "the forbidden single" directly from the band's own website in a wide variety of formats, including (of course) MP3 for several years now.

Re:Why has this taken so long? by Vint+Cerf · 2003-12-22 10:20 · Score: 0 · on Microsoft Looks At Integrating Forums and E-mail

There are now these things called moderated newsgroups.

Re:Mystery IT kid's dark secret! by javatips · 2003-09-05 00:53 · Score: 1 · on The Most Famous Geek in IT

Obviously, you never heard of Stealth Geek!

I'll stick with eMusic, thank you. by katsushiro · 2003-07-22 06:45 · Score: 2, Informative · on Buy.Com Debuts Music Download Site

iTunes came out, and I was intrigued, but I saw it in action, and I passed. This came out, and just from reading the blurbs, I'm not even gonna check it out. I'll stick with eMusic. One monthly rate, as many downloads as I want, of good quality music in fairly open, non-DRM'd MP3 formats (I wish they also offered OGG formats, but I guess you can't have everything) that I can burn, copy, time-shift, and move to portable players as many times as I want with no need for special software or additional licenses once it's on my machine. Their donwload software is available for Windows, Mac, *and* Linux.

The only complaint I might have is that their selection can be somewhat limited, in the sense that you won't really find the latest Eminem or Avril Lavinge music, but you *will* find a lot of bands that are really damn good in a whole lot of genres, especially if you're willing to let its built in reccomendation system (like Netflix's) guide you to new stuff you might never had heard of before. These aren't just unknowns or guys taping out of their mom's garage, these are actual artists signed to actual labels. The flat monthly fee no matter how much you donwload is sort of liberating in this sense as well, since you can feel free to download an entire album from someone you never heard of before just to try it out, without worrying about it costing you even a single cent more than your usual monthly fee.

Give it a shot, their 50 song/download trial would be worth nearly $50 on iTunes and a little less on this new service. You don't really have much to lose, and you mgiht surprise yourself by learning to love something new. :)

Also, check out this link for a comparison between iTunes and eMusic: click here.

Why Apple doesn't get it by tramm · 2003-04-30 17:19 · Score: 1 · on Review of iTunes Music Store

I've written an article on Why Apple doesn't get it (and EMusic does). Unlike Apple, EMusic has no DRM, offers real MP3's, supports any platform and charges a flat rate. I go into more detail in the article, including how they can improve the service.

ricers by chupe · 2002-12-02 10:49 · Score: 1 · on System Optimization Guide for Gamers

1987 US CRX Si specs:
91 bhp@5500rpm
1953 lb
0-60: 8.5 sec
1/4 mile: 16.7
top speed: 115 mph

According to the same site, a CRX with an aftermarket supercharger and intercooler (and one would assume beefed up tires, suspension, drivetrain to handle the extra torque) can do a 5.7 0-60 and a 14.8 1/4 mile. And even after all that money, it still looks like a shitty old Honda. Now:

Corvette LS1 | Z06:
350@5600 | 385@6000
3214 lbs | 3115 lbs
0-60: 4.6 sec | 4.0 sec
1/4 mile: 13.22 | 12.6
top speed: 175mph | 171mph

Unless by "well-tweaked" you mean "full-blown tube-chassis racecar running high boost and nitrous with few or no original parts," you're talking out your ass.

Re:Remember that thirties invention, "animation?" by The_Hiro · 2002-08-11 12:35 · Score: 1 · on Will CGI Collapse the Hollywood Economy?

The technique of rotoscoping is not restricted to tracing of live action footage; it was not disinformation on Disney's part to describe the process employed as "modelling".

In creating "Snow White", live action footage was NOT traced. Rather, the footage of live actors was employed by animators as a starting point for creating key frames (extremes of position), and inbetweens were subsequently drawn without reference to the film.

Slavish obedience to live action film reference (i.e. direct tracing) actually produces a mechanical, stiff look in animation (For examples see Bakshi's "Lord Of The Rings", or more recently "Final Fantasy"). However, when used as reference to be supplemented by an animator's skill and understanding, rotoscoping can be a useful aid.

Thoughts on the "replacement of actors by CGI":
Fundamentally, the animator is an actor. He/she has to submerge himself into the mindset of the character being drawn/modelled to create a convincing performance. It seems silly to claim CGI as the death knell of acting - rather, CGI will constitute a new medium for acting. Film didn't eliminate theatre; CGI won't eliminate acting.

What about NAT? by Anonymous Coward · 2002-06-30 03:39 · Score: 0 · on TCP/IP Sequence Number Analysis

EG. I have an OpenBSD firewall behind nat and I'm using "modulate state" on tcp packets. One would then assume that the sequence numbers would be rewriten by the NAT gateway. Comments?

Cisco Sequence Numbers Bug.(600 Series)

This could then make the random sequence numbers mute.

Re:About Apple's Policy by PhotoGuy · 2002-03-25 12:49 · Score: 2 · on Apple Cuts Off Under-18 Darwin Developer

Your grammer, punctuation, and spelling are excellent.
Your grammar, punctuation (no comma here) and spelling make me cry.

Sigh... Attacked by someone who is presuming to be an expert. How unusual on /, and wonderfully constructive. Please see The Case of the Serial Comma, as one, among many, sources who discuss this common fallacy.

Man, giving a kid some credit for grammar and punctiona *far* and *above* the average seen here, and people try to tear me and him apart. Nice. Oh well, to be expected, I guess.

-me

Re:Let's get the "Inherrent Problems" out in the o by Adam+J.+Richter · 2002-02-16 04:17 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Researchers Claim to Crack 802.1x WiFi

Until there is reliable encryption that takes prohibitively long periods to break (remember, WEP is broken, and the break is a relatively quick one), this technology is simply unsecure, particularly for corporate use.

You can two parties can use Diffie-Hellman key exchange to agree on a key even when all traffic is being watched.

Also, there is plenty of "reliable encryption that takes prohbitibitively long periods to break", such as triple DES (Data Encryption Standard), and any of the the Advanced Encryption Standard finalists, at least in the sense that a lot of very qualified people have tried hard to break them for a long time in a very open process and so far failed. (Rijndael won the AES endorsement, but, not to my knowledge, because of a vulnerability discovered in any of the other finalists.) Granted, these algorithms are not mathematically proven to require a substantial number of cycles to break or even to be as difficult as some other famous problem (like Michael Rabin's public key algorithm), but, if that is your standard of security, then you also should not be sending even your encrypted traffic over any internet backbone links that are not known to you to be physically secure.

Re:Other rejected titles...(a few facts) by akruppa · 2002-01-22 22:32 · Score: 1 · on 'Indiana Jones 4' Finally A Go

>As it turns out, I know where socks go. According to a friend whose ex-husband used to repair washing machines, there is usually a gap between the basin and the top of the machine. Socks (and other light items) are occasionally sloshed over the top and into the internals of the washing machine.

Nope, sock disappear due to quantum mechanical effects in the confined space of the washer/dryer. Please check Laundry: A Quantum Mechanical Approach by Dr. Brian J. Reardon for the many surprising details.

Alex

Re:Only eight years? by tramm · 2001-11-30 09:17 · Score: 2, Informative · on Crashing A Nokia Phone Via SMS

You are very unlikely to see much CDPD deployed on NA soil (I demo'd CDPD 5 years ago at a conference in Vancover .. if I'm wrong, someone let me know :)

It's been available for at least five years in the US. I had flat-rate service via Go America for several years for only $50/month. I even hacked my Novatel Minstrel to work with Linux so that I could use it with my laptop.

Re:I'll Believe The Results When I See Them by h0udini · 2000-07-05 02:37 · Score: 1 · on ITU Agrees On V.92 standard

DSL? I think it *could* be the magic ingredient for widespread low-cost internet access if the telco's would only let it. Here in Albuquerque, we've been promised DSL by various companies for the last few years and still there is none available for private consumers. NONE. Rumour has it that our local telephone monopoly, US West, is denying DSL providers access to the lines. If anyone from around here can provide more info or prove me wrong, please do.

I'm in Santa Fe, and Jato.com would provide me with DSL if I had the money and wherewithal to do it. I had a contract for a New Edge DSL from SWCP, but New Edge is slacking on bringing it in, so Jato is the only choice for now. Try http://www.swcp.com/swcp-web/dsl/ for details. Or, alternately, check out the Jato.com site for more carriers in your area.

Just keep one thing in mind: do not, under any circumstances, deal with USurf America, if they have dialups or DSL up there. Take my word for it.

Re:Pern by / · 2000-05-31 22:24 · Score: 1 · on World's Biggest Dinosaur Constructed

The first in Anne McCaffrey's series was published in 1968. As you note, Flight of the Dragons is from 1982. Sounds like a ripoff.

Finally... a story where this is *not* offtopic... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-05-19 20:38 · Score: 5 · on Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS

and I'm asleep at the keyboard. Doh!

Oh well... here it is.
Add your own, and spread this far and wide:

This announcement brought to you by the DeCSS Polar Bear.

Time for Slashdot to take a stand... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-04-05 03:12 · Score: 4 · on MPAA Files Another Injunction Against 2600

The following is a list of all the mirrors from the 2600 site.

CDPD for Linux by tramm · 1999-11-04 07:15 · Score: 1 · on The Internet Taxi That Couldn't Connect

I have been using a Novatel Wireless CDPD modem with Linux for the past year. Details on how to configure PPP, build the cable, etc..

I've also written a discussion of different wireless access methods. In short, CDPD is a more widely available solution than the Ricochet and also works while the vehicle is moving. Ricochet is faster and more reliable if you can get service.

CDPD for Linux by tramm · 1999-11-04 07:15 · Score: 1 · on The Internet Taxi That Couldn't Connect

I have been using a Novatel Wireless CDPD modem with Linux for the past year. Details on how to configure PPP, build the cable, etc..

I've also written a discussion of different wireless access methods. In short, CDPD is a more widely available solution than the Ricochet and also works while the vehicle is moving. Ricochet is faster and more reliable if you can get service.

Re:Peer review by Jonny+Royale · 1999-09-02 22:22 · Score: 1 · on NSA backdoor creates security hole in Windows

If it was presented in a rump session, it should be on the Rump Session schedule, shouldn't it? I don't see it...unless that "Bill Gates' Private Key" part is it...

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